An honest discussion regarding how devout Christians should react to the academic evidence and genuine personal experience that other religious ways result in engaged, loving and moral lives. Does being "saved," by the Christian definition, require a faith in Jesus Christ - meaning the historical person - or rather is it only important that human beings life their lives in accordance to His teachings. This books argues that one can be committed to a savior of "some other name," and simultaneously be aligned with Christian theologically and commitment.

The proceedings of the fourth PRO ORIENTE Colloquium Syriacum, which focussed on a culture of co-existence in pluralistic societies in the Middle East and in India.

This book reflects on one of the most pressing challenges of our time: the current and historical relationships that exist between the faith-traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It begins with discussion on the state of Jewish-Christian relations, examining antisemitism and the Holocaust, the impact of Israel and theological controversies such as covenant and mission. Kessler also traces different biblical stories and figures, from the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, demonstrating Jewish-Christian contact and controversy. Jews and Christians share a sacred text, but more surprisingly, a common exegetical tradition. They also need to deal with some of the more problematic and violent biblical texts. Jews, Christians and Muslims includes reflection on the encounter with Islam, including topics associated with a divergent history and memory as well contemporary relations between the three Abrahamic faiths. Kessler's writings shed light on common purpose as well as how to manage difference, both vital in forming a positive identity and sustaining a flourishing community.

This book offers a welcome solution to the growing need for a common language in interfaith dialogue; particularly between the three Abrahamic faiths in our modern pluralistic society. The book suggests that the names given to God in the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament and the Quran, could be the very foundations and building blocks for a common language between the Jewish, Christian and Islamic faiths. On both a formal interfaith level, as well as between everyday followers of each doctrine, this book facilitates a more fruitful and universal understanding and respect of each sacred text; exploring both the commonalities and differences between the each theology and their individual receptions. In a practical application of the methodologies of comparative theology, Maire Byrne shows that the titles, names and epithets given to God in the sacred texts of Judaism, Christianity and Islam contribute towards similar images of God in each case, and elucidates the importance of this for providing a viable starting point for interfaith dialogue.

One of the most comprehensive volumes on Myanmar’s identity politics to date, this book discusses the entanglement of ethnic and religious identities in Myanmar and the challenges presented by its extensive ethnic-religious diversity. Religious and ethnic conjunctions are treated from historical, political, religious and ethnic minority perspectives through both case studies and overview chapters. The book addresses the thorny issue of Buddhist supremacy, Burmese nationalism and ethnic-religious hierarchy, along with reflections on Buddhist, Christian and Muslim communities. Bringing together international scholars and Burmese scholars, this book combines the perspectives of academic observers with those of political activists and religious leaders from different faiths. Through the breadth of its disciplinary approach, its focus on identity issues and its inclusion of insider and outsider perspectives, this book provides new insights into the complex religious situation of Myanmar.

"World Christianity in Local Context and Muslim Encounter" is a unique collection of essays in honour of David A. Kerr, who was well-known for his contributions in the areas of Christian-Muslim dialogue, Ecumenical Studies and Missions. With contributions from recognised experts in these fields, the book provides a platform for examining critical issues facing twenty-first century Christianity, with a special emphasis on contemporary Christian-Muslim relations.In Volume 1, scholars and church leaders offer insights into current trends in Local Theology and Missions from the contexts of Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe. Contemporary themes explored in this volume include the mission for the Church in the context of economic globalization, post-Christendom and pluralism in the West, a Chinese theology of suffering and social responsibility, Latin America as an emerging mission base, and others.Volume 2 is a veritable Who's Who of renowned Christian and Muslim scholars that have shaped the course of Christian-Muslim dialogue over the last half century. Their contributions in this volume address the pivotal issues facing Christians and Muslims today, such as Islamism, Islamophobia, Dialogue and Religious Truth Claims in Christianity and Islam, Religious Freedom, Inter-Religious Challenges to Urban Multiculturalism and others.

The call to contemplative Christianity is not an easy one. Those who answer it set themselves to a sometimes arduous task of self-reformation through rigorous study and practice, learned through the teachings of monks and nuns and the writings of ancient Christian mystics, often in isolation from family and friends. Those who are dedicated can spend hours every day in meditation, prayer, liturgy, and study. Why do they come? Indeed, how do they find their way to the door at all? Based on nearly four years of research among semi-cloistered Christian monastics and a dispersed network of non-monastic Christian contemplatives around the United States, The Monk's Cell shows how religious practitioners in both settings combined social action and intentional living with intellectual study and intensive contemplative practices in an effort to modify their ways of knowing, sensing, and experiencing the world. Organized by the metaphor of a seeker journeying towards the inner chambers of a monastic chapel, The Monk's Cell uses innovative "intersubjective fieldwork" methods to study these opaque interiorized, often silent communities, in order to show how practices like solitude, chant, contemplation, attention, and a paradoxical capacity to combine ritual with intentional "unknowing" develop and hone a powerful sense of communion with the world.

In theological discourse, argues Hugh Nicholson, the political goes "all the way down." One never reaches a bedrock level of politically neutral religious facts, because all theological discourse - even the most sublime, edifying, and "spiritual"--is shot through with polemical elements.
Liberal theologies, from the Christian fulfillment theology of the nineteenth century to the pluralist theology of the twentieth, have assumed that religious writings attain spiritual truth and sublimity despite any polemical elements they might contain. Through his analysis and comparison of the Christian mystical theologian Meister Eckhart and his Hindu counterpart IaSkara, Nicholson arrives at a very different conclusion. Polemical elements may in fact constitute the creative source of the expressive power of religious discourses. Wayne Proudfoot has argued that mystical discourses embody a set of rules that repel any determinate understanding of the ineffable object or experience they purport to describe. In Comparative Theology and the Problem of Religious Rivalry, Nicholson suggests that this principle of negation is connected, perhaps through a process of abstraction and sublimation, with the need to distinguish oneself from one's intra- and/or inter-religious adversaries.
Nicholson proposes a new model of comparative theology that recognizes and confronts one of the most urgent cultural and political issues of our time: namely, the "return of the political" in the form of anti-secular and fundamentalist movements around the world. This model acknowledges the ineradicable nature of an oppositional dimension of religious discourse, while honoring and even advancing the liberal project of curtailing intolerance and prejudice in the sphere of religion."

In the vast collection of his writings, the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur only sporadically raised the issue of interreligious dialogue. In this book, comparative theologian Marianne Moyaert argues that Ricoeur's hermeneutical philosophy offers valuable signposts for a better understanding of the complexities related to interreligious dialogue. By revisiting the key insights of Ricoeur's wider oeuvre from the perspective of interfaith dialogue, Moyaert elaborates a Ricoeurian interreligious hermeneutic. In Response to the Religious Other provides a coherent interreligious reading of Ricoeur's philosophy of religion, his hermeneutical anthropology, his ethical hermeneutics. Moyaert shows that Ricoeur makes an exceptionally rewarding conversation partner for anyone wishing to explore the complex issues associated with interreligious dialogue. This book is essential for studies of hermeneutics, ethics, religious philosophy, global cooperation and hospitality, comparative theology, and religious identity.

The New Perspective on Paul cleared Judaism contemporary to Paul of the accusation that it was a religion based on works of righteousness. Reactions to the New Perspective, both positive and critical, and sometimes even strongly negative, reflect a more fundamental problem in the reception of this paradigm: the question of continuity and discontinuity between Judaism and Christianity and its assumed implications for Jewish-Christian dialogue. A second key problem revolves around Pauls understanding of salvation as exclusive, inclusive or pluralist. The contributions in the present volume represent at least six approaches that can be plotted along this axis, considering Pauls theology in its Jewish context. William S. Campbell and Thomas R. Blanton consider Pauls Covenantal Theology, Michael Bachman provides an exegetical study of Paul, Israel and the Gentiles, and Mark D. Nanos considers Paul and Torah. After this chapters by Philip A. Cunningham, John T. Pawlikowski, Hans-Joachim Sander, and Hans-Herman Henrix give particular weight to questions of Jewish-Christian dialogue. The book finishes with an epilogue by pioneer of the New Perspective James D.G. Dunn.